Forrest Galante's New Shark Week Special Chases the Ocean's “Alien Sharks”
Forrest Galante has spent his whole life around Shark Week — literally. He's the same age as the franchise, and this year, the wildlife biologist is back with one of his most ambitious specials yet.
Galante's 2026 feature, Alien Sharks: Untamed America, airs on Discovery July 29 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, kicking off just after Shark Week's official premiere on July 26. The special's whole premise pushes back on a pretty common assumption: that you have to fly halfway around the world to see extraordinary marine life.
Galante isn't buying it. According to him, some of the most incredible sharks and rays on the planet are swimming in American waters right now — off the West Coast, through the Gulf of Mexico, along Florida's coastline, and up into the Northeast. The special takes viewers through all of it, and Galante's calling it one of the best projects he's done.
The Basking Shark Obsession
Out of everything filmed for the special, one encounter stands out to Galante above the rest: the basking shark. It's the second-largest shark species on Earth, and Galante describes it almost like a creature out of science fiction — a bulbous nose, a mouth that gapes open wide enough to look almost otherworldly.
Finding them meant heading to the waters off Boston, the only spot in the U.S. where basking sharks reliably show up. And getting footage wasn't simple. Galante's team ran a layered operation: a spotter plane scanned the water from above and radioed coordinates down to the crew, drones then located the sharks more precisely and hovered above them, and the boat maneuvered into position based on that aerial guidance. Only then would Galante and his team actually get in the water for those fleeting moments face-to-face with the animal.
For Galante, it wasn't just good television — it was personal. He's wanted to encounter a basking shark since he was around ten years old, and finally checking that box after decades left him, in his words, floored by the experience.
A Career That Never Slows Down
Shark Week is really just one piece of what keeps Galante busy. He runs Phantasticus Pictures, which he describes as the largest wildlife film production company in the world outside the BBC, alongside a YouTube channel with a serious following. Both keep him traveling nearly nonstop.
His next stop, in fact, is already booked: a remote part of Baja California, where Humboldt squid have reappeared for the first time in roughly two decades. Galante's heading down to try diving with them almost immediately.
He's not running out of ideas for future Shark Week content either — he says he's already got concepts mapped out for the next ten years, calling wildlife the kind of subject that never gets stale because there's always something new to uncover.
Still Checking Off His Own List
Even with a career built around sharks, Galante's far from running out of species to chase. There are more than 500 known shark species worldwide, and by his own count, he's personally encountered around 40 of them — leaving plenty still on the list.
His broader message to Shark Week fans is less about the thrill and more about the bigger picture: exposure builds fascination, fascination turns into genuine affection, and once people actually care about something, protecting it tends to follow naturally. For Galante, that's the real point of the whole week — not just entertainment, but building a wider appetite for shark conservation, one curious viewer at a time.
Shark Week 2026 kicks off Sunday, July 26, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery.
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